#+TITLE: Emacs Tramp

* Why would you want to use this?

  Tramp is an abstraction layer for emacs to access filesystems on
  remote machines, or the local machine as a different user. Its main
  use-cases include:

  * Editing/managing files remotely
  * Editing a file as root (sudo)

* Editing files remotely

  The primary purpose of TRAMP is to edit files remotely. This can be
  done by altering the file path that needs to be visited like so:

  #+BEGIN_SRC
  /[protocol]:[user]@[host]:[file-path]
  #+END_SRC

  For example editing =/etc/fstab= on a remote computer can be
  achieved by visiting (C-x C-f):

  #+BEGIN_SRC
  /ssh:root@server.com:/etc/fstab
  #+END_SRC

  Once the connection is established, you can use Emacs as normal to
  edit the file.

** Dired

   Other modes of Emacs also support TRAMP, such as Dired. Using dired
   with TRAMP is an effective way to manage files on a remote
   computer.
   
   To open a folder with Dired on a remote machine, either visit the
   directory like you would a file, or use C-x d to visit the
   directory with Dired directly.

** Performance

   TRAMP isn't particularly fast. It works well to edit code or
   configuration files remotely, especially for one-offs. But it can
   be quite slow and unwieldy for everyday use or to look at large
   files (like log files).

* Using tramp for Sudo

  It's sometimes necessary to edit files as root on your local
  machine, for example to adjust network settings or other. Using =vim=
  in terminal is distasteful and opening Emacs as root would mean
  lacking your beautiful configuration.

  Tramp is useful to also edit files as root. To do so, visit a file
  as usual but change the file path to:

  #+BEGIN_SRC
  /sudo::/[file-path]
  #+END_SRC

* Useful links

  * [[https://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/][Tramp documentation]]